IT Band Syndrome: The Top 5 Causes and Solutions
IT Band Syndrome is a muscle injury that usually happens to athletes who run or cycle often. Its symptoms are a knee pain or a pain stretching from your hip to your knee; depending on how severe it is. IT or Iliotibial Band Syndrome affects your tissues from your hip down to your knee. Often, it results in inflammation around your knee area. Once you get the injury, even walking can becomes quite painful and frustrating. The pain can come from any muscle area such as your knee, thigh, buttocks or hips. In a worst case scenario, all of those muscles will pain.
Here are tops five reasons for IT Band Syndrome and how you can solve it.
Overuse
Overuse is the most common reason for IT Band Syndrome to occur. This could be because you are running too fast and pushing your muscles too hard. This can happen if you don’t follow a training schedule and instead of building up your muscles slowly, you expect too much, too fast from it. So what can you do about this? Simple, you leg is paining, it’s getting too hard to run, take a break. Stop running for a few days and let your muscles heal until the pain stops. It’s best to approach your jogging exercise by everyday slowly increasing your limit and never running more than you can handle.
Tight Tissues
A lot of times, your muscles which are connected between your hips and legs don’t get stretched and are tight. The reason you stretch yourself out before a jog is to loosen up your muscles, however, often these exercises ignore your IT band.
There are a number of stretches that can help to decrease the chances of getting IT band pain. Stretching out your gluts, hamstrings and quads are a few of the muscle groups that need to be stretched. Ask your therapist for some examples.
Weak Hip Muscles
Weak muscles at the hip results in breaking your running form which puts a lot of strain on your knee. This can also lead to your hips being out of alignment. This can lead to many problems from back pain to nerve pain referring into your gluts and legs.
Running Form
Running form refers to your gait of running – the way your knee moves up and comes down on your foot. For this you will have to have a professional look at the way your run. Maybe your jogging strides are too long or they cross over the mid line of your body. A professional will be able to point out how you are moving your body the wrong way and assist you in correcting this.
Shoe Issues
Sometimes, you just need to get good shoes. Bad shoes can cause plenty of orthotic issues. Old warn out shoes can cause your foot to land in awkward positions straining your IT band and allowing your foots arch to collapse. So buy some good shoes. Some shoe stores have professionals working in their stores to assist you in buying a proper fitting shoe specifically for you.
Here are tops five reasons for IT Band Syndrome and how you can solve it.
Overuse
Overuse is the most common reason for IT Band Syndrome to occur. This could be because you are running too fast and pushing your muscles too hard. This can happen if you don’t follow a training schedule and instead of building up your muscles slowly, you expect too much, too fast from it. So what can you do about this? Simple, you leg is paining, it’s getting too hard to run, take a break. Stop running for a few days and let your muscles heal until the pain stops. It’s best to approach your jogging exercise by everyday slowly increasing your limit and never running more than you can handle.
Tight Tissues
A lot of times, your muscles which are connected between your hips and legs don’t get stretched and are tight. The reason you stretch yourself out before a jog is to loosen up your muscles, however, often these exercises ignore your IT band.
There are a number of stretches that can help to decrease the chances of getting IT band pain. Stretching out your gluts, hamstrings and quads are a few of the muscle groups that need to be stretched. Ask your therapist for some examples.
Weak Hip Muscles
Weak muscles at the hip results in breaking your running form which puts a lot of strain on your knee. This can also lead to your hips being out of alignment. This can lead to many problems from back pain to nerve pain referring into your gluts and legs.
Running Form
Running form refers to your gait of running – the way your knee moves up and comes down on your foot. For this you will have to have a professional look at the way your run. Maybe your jogging strides are too long or they cross over the mid line of your body. A professional will be able to point out how you are moving your body the wrong way and assist you in correcting this.
Shoe Issues
Sometimes, you just need to get good shoes. Bad shoes can cause plenty of orthotic issues. Old warn out shoes can cause your foot to land in awkward positions straining your IT band and allowing your foots arch to collapse. So buy some good shoes. Some shoe stores have professionals working in their stores to assist you in buying a proper fitting shoe specifically for you.
